Facebook Pages Will Require More Authorization to Combat Political Influence

• With the U.S. Congressional elections scheduled for November, Facebook is trying to limit political influence on pages with large US following.
• The social media company will make it harder for fake or compromised accounts to administer pages.
• The new measures require admins of pages to secure their accounts with two-factor authentication and also confirm their home location.

With the previous US Congressional Elections being pulled into controversy after reports of political influence on Facebook were revealed, the social media company is taking measures to prevent another political scandal. The company announced that they would be taking measures to ensure connections in Pages are authentic.

The company stated in an official post “Our goal is to prevent organizations and individuals from creating accounts that mislead people about who they are or what they're doing. These updates are part of our continued efforts to increase the authenticity and transparency of Pages on our platform.”

Image Courtesy of Facebook

A publishing authorization system is being put into place later this month for all Pages on Facebook with a large US following. All admins of such pages will be required to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts for added security. If two-factor authentication is not enabled on an admin’s account, a notification will appear at the top of the News Feed to initiate the process. Unless two-factor authentication is enabled, admins will not be allowed to make any new posts.

Facebook confirmed that coordinated political campaigns had been run on the platform last week and the company will be taking steps to ensure the platform does not become a tool for political propaganda. The social media website has already removed 32 accounts and pages from both Instagram and Facebook that were linked to meddling with the upcoming election. Facebook will also be adding a section on every page which will showcase the country from where the page is being managed. A similar feature will be rolling out to Instagram as well.

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